Sermon: Keeping Herod in Christmas

This Advent, we began using Brian McLaren's book, We Make the Road by Walking, to shape sermons and worship, a pattern that will continue through Pentecost. The book's chapter for the third week in Advent is entitled, "Keep Herod in Christmas."

Matthew 2:1-18

Keeping Herod in Christmas

James Sledge                                                               December 14, 2014 – Advent 3

At the church I previously served, we held a “Hanging of the Greens” service on a Sunday evening early in Advent. Between Scripture readings, Advent hymns, and Christmas carols, we decorated the sanctuary, and those decorations included a full-sized, wooden manger.

During one of those services, I invited the children to gather around that manger as I offered a short message about the child whose birth we would soon celebrate and about why he was born. As I spoke, I brought out a four foot tall, wooden cross that we typically used during Lent. I leaned it against the manger and talked about this Savior who first slept in an animal feed trough and who would die on a cross. A few among the small group that attended the service remarked on how moving the message of manger and cross was. But most seemed bothered by it.

I left the cross against the manger for the rest of Advent. It was not well received. Some complained that it sapped the season of its joy, and that cross may have generated more complaints than anything done in worship during my eleven years there. I never tried it again.

For centuries Christmas was a rather minor event on the Christian calendar, but, for a variety of reasons, it has gradually eclipsed most everything else, with the possible exception of Easter. It certainly is worth celebrating God’s entry into human history through the birth of Jesus. But as Christmas has gradually become so associated with joy and good cheer, with warmth and family, the “Christmas spirit” sometimes crowds out the Christian message. And if we won’t allow the cross to intrude on our happy, joyful Christmas, even during the reflective season of Advent, I wonder if we’ve gotten a bit off track.

Matthew’s gospel certainly won’t let us linger for long at the manger. In truth, the manger only appears in Luke. In Matthew, we hear of an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream and telling him to take the pregnant Mary as his wife. The birth itself receives only a scant mention at the conclusion of that story. (Joseph) took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Matthew doesn’t linger at the birth, but he immediately introduces foreboding. The birth of a king, a Messiah, may be good news to some, but it is not for many. Word of a new king does not sit well with the current one. The possibility of a new order sounds dreadful to those heavily invested in the present one. The possibility of a world organized around the ways of God prompts the powers that be to do all they can to cling to power. Herod will enlist the Magi as his spies to deal with this usurper to the throne. And when that doesn’t work, Herod will simply kill all the babies in Bethlehem.

Jesus may be a year or two old by then, but this story is the only one Matthew connects to Jesus’ birth. And so most of us have associated Wise Men with Christmas, and if the crèche at your house is like the one at mine, those Wise Men are already at the manger, or close by awaiting Epiphany on January 6. I wonder if anyone has ever made a King Herod figure for their nativity set. After all, he is just offstage, awaiting word from those Wise Men.

The slaughter of children like that described in Matthew occurs with appalling regularity down through history. Pharaoh once ordered the slaughter of Hebrew infants to preserve his power. Dictators, despots, and militias still kill children as easily as Herod did. In the most recent fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, Hamas launched their missiles from sites chosen so that retaliation by Israel would kill civilians and especially children. Israel obliged, and children were a majority of the casualties.

In the chapter that provides this sermon its title, Brian McLaren writes, “The next war— whoever wages it— will most likely resemble every war in the past. It will be planned by powerful older men in their comfortable offices, and it will be fought on the ground by people the age of their children and grandchildren. Most of the casualties will probably be between eighteen and twenty-two years old— in some places, much younger. So the old, sad music of the ancient story of Herod and the slaughter of the children will be replayed again. And again, the tears of mothers will fall.”[1]

Matthew interrupts our Advent planning and our Christmas merriment with the inconsolable weeping of mothers. We do well to pay attention, for Matthew insists that the arrival of Jesus will force us to make decisions, to choose our loyalties. Writes McLaren, “We do not live in an ideal world. To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to face at every turn the destructive reality of violence. To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to side with vulnerable children in defiance of the adults who see them as expendable. To walk the road with Jesus is to withhold consent and cooperation from the powerful, and to invest it instead with the vulnerable. It is to refuse to bow to all the Herods and all their ruthless regimes— and to reserve our loyalty for a better king and a better kingdom.”[2]

Torture and Self-Deception - Confession and Hope

"A Brief Statement of Faith" is the newest creedal statement in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)'s The Book of Confessions. This book is a collection of eleven creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms and such. In the Brief Statement's section on human rebellion against God it says that we "accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care."

In the first church I served, there was a prominent member who objected strenuously to this line, especially the part about threatening death to the planet. He was a horticulturist who had spent much time developing beautiful new varieties of flowers. Perhaps some people threatened the planet, but certainly not him. He loved the natural world and spent his entire professional life cultivating it.

I pointed out that he drove a car that burned fossil fuels and lived in a very nice home that also consumed large amounts of energy. The very horticultural work he so loved made liberal use of pesticides and fertilizers. Many of these had been found harmful to the environment, and even the most benign of them create problems such as nutrients concentrating in watersheds.

None of this changed his mind one iota. He loved nature and the planet and would never do anything to hurt them. His sense of who he was would not allow him to see any other possibility. In theological terms, he was too certain that he was good to consider himself a sinner.

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A piece in today's Style section - yes, Style section - of The Washington Post began with this. "Our belief in the national image is astonishingly resilient. Over more than two centuries, our conviction that we are a benign people, with only the best of intentions, has absorbed the blows of darker truths, and returned unassailable." ("Senate report's real question: Who are we?") The piece wonders whether our self image of a good and noble nation can survive the unveiling of the torture and brutality we are willing to inflict on others for our benefit.

Clearly some will have no trouble holding on the best image of America. Fox News' Andrea Tantaros became something of an internet sensation with her response to the Senate report. "The United States of America is awesome! We are awesome!" But such a response does seem more difficult if you actually read parts of the report, when you realize that torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners that could actually cause death were sanctioned and approved by our leaders (and is still defended by some). This was not a rogue event of something from the pages of  history.

We have come to a critical moment in the debate about torture. It’s no longer possible, as it was when the images of Abu Ghraib emerged in 2004, to pretend that these events were rare, exceptional or the work of a few rogue agents. Nor will it be easy to assimilate them into that beloved average image of our national goodness. We are confronted with our own barbarity, as we have been confronted with the barbarity of the Islamic State. We torture, they behead. We beat men senseless, slam their heads into walls, strip them naked and leave them to die, while they march men into a field and put bullets in their heads. We might still cling to the idea that our crimes are not quite so bad as theirs. But to quibble over the degree of cruelty we tolerate is to acknowledge that cruelty is now standard practice.

And if cruelty is now standard practice, if this is what we've become, surely we must take a fresh look at ourselves and see that we are not who we imagine.

Philip Kennicott, the writer of this piece, thinks so. I am not so sure. I agree with his assessment that this should force us to rethink our "awesome" self image. But then I remember that member from my first church. And I recall Reinhold Niebuhr's words about "immoral society," that I referenced just two posts previous. The self-deceptive power of sin is even more problematic for societies than for individuals. And if we have been able to continue thinking of ourselves as good, noble, champions of democracy and all that is right despite slavery, genocide against native Americans, systematic racism, and a long running willingness to prop up the worst dictator as long as it serves our strategic interests, surely we can manage to absorb this news about torture without abandoning our carefully guarded self image.

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If this is starting to feel depressing, I apologize. But let me also hold out a bit of hope. It is not a hope rooted in our goodness, but in God's. It is a hope that believes God does work in history, even if much more slowly than I would like. It is the hope that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It is a hope rooted in the certainty that God loves us despite our inhumanity and cruelty, and that we draw closer to that love when we are honest about who we are. As it says in 1 John, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness."

Most people have some familiarity with Alcoholics Anonymous. You likely have seen an image of someone getting up to speak at a meeting and saying, "Hi, my name is Joe, and I'm an alcoholic." It is a statement that most alcoholics initially resist, an admission that is contrary to a better sounding self image. But it is the opening to a better life when it is finally claimed, which is why it is so frequently reclaimed.

Christians have long known something similar. It is our willingness to accept an identity as sinners, as those inclined to act in ways contrary to God and God's will, that opens us to new possibilities. And so perhaps it falls to people of faith, to those who hope in God's grace, to call on the nation, to insist that the nation, call itself to confession. "If we as a nation say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess...

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We Christians are preparing to celebrate the arrival of one who comes to break the power of sin and death. "Break the power" is forceful phrase, speaking to the hard work involved. It speaks of a cross, and also of our call to become part of Christ's body, those who still work to break sin's power.


The famous hymn in Paul's letter to the Philippians speaks of this hard work, of Jesus' willingness to suffer the cross and then says, "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on hearth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Paul's words have little to do with how often one spouts "Christ is Lord," and nothing to do with whether or not it says "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays" at your local Target store. Rather it is a statement about all people and nations bowing before the rule of Christ. It is about individuals and nations saying, "We have sinned. We have not loved our neighbors, much less our enemies. We have treated those whom God loves as less than human. Out of fear, we have been willing to let others suffer and die for our sakes. Forgive us."

I wonder what new thing might be possible, if all of those who do claim to bow before Jesus called on our nation to humbly confess its sins.

No One Gets What They Deserve

"Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." John 8:7

I wonder if this really would have worked. Surely some sanctimonious SOB would  have picked up a rock and hurled it at her. Jesus is awful trusting that every member of the crowd was self reflective enough to pause, consider, and then reconsider.

Not that it would ever happen, but if I were in Jesus' shoes, I would have tried to convince the scribes and Pharisees that they were wrong. I would carefully and skillfully show them the error of their ways. I would have engaged in mental combat, a tactic that requires my being convinced that I am right, or at least that I have superior mental combat skills.

Jesus does sometimes match wits with his opponents, but here he does not, at least not directly. Instead he hands their question, "Now what do your say?" right back to them. Not how I, we Presbyterians, or many other Christian groups address issues of scriptural interpretation. We're partial to the mental combat tactic. If we're playing nice on that day, perhaps it will only be a spirited discussion.

Jesus essentially concedes to his opponents on the scriptural interpretation question. "Yes, you are correct. The Law says to stone her. Go ahead." But then that caveat about who gets to toss out the first pitch.

Christians are all over the map on this, but quite a few of us seem to view God as a rather harsh judge. We're sinners and so God has to nail us. Thank heaven God came up with a strategy to circumvent this requirement. God will nail Jesus instead, and those smart enough to grab one of these "get out of jail free" cards will be able to dodge to rocks God going to throw.

But in this one story from the Bible, Jesus embodies a very different picture of God. To the woman he admits is guilty he says, "What? Everyone else admitted to being guilty, too? Fine, you can go." Jesus won't condemn the woman because no one else is in a position to do so.

It is just one story among many, but it is remarkable nonetheless. The crowd ends up being generous to the woman because they need the same generosity. And Jesus says, "Fine. I'm good with that." There's something profoundly hopeful here, something I need to remember this Advent. At a time when our failings as individuals and as a culture are so vividly on display, from Ferguson to Staten Island to our willingness torture other human beings and more, it is good to recall that God still sees us as worth saving in some way, if only because we all seem to need it.

What good news. God looks at us, at the messes we've made and the ways we treat each other yet still dreams of a day when,
  The wolf shall live with the lamb,
     the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
  the calf and lion and the fatling together,
     and a little child shall lead them...
  They will not hurt or destroy
     on all my holy mountain;
  for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
     as the waters cover the sea.

Thank God; thank God.

Learn more about the daily lectionary here.

Sin, Advent, Race, and "Immoral Society"

Many years ago, I typed an agenda for a December meeting of the Session at the church I was serving. (Sessions are the governing councils in Presbyterian churches.) At the beginning I included a verse from an Advent hymn as a way of opening the meeting. I've never been all that good of a typist, and this is what appeared on the agenda.
     Come, Thou long expected Jesus, Born to set Thy people free;
     From our rears and sins release us; Let us find our rest in Thee.

I underlined and bolded "rears" so you couldn't miss it, but I never saw it until we were singing it at the Session meeting. I christened it the dieters version of the hymn, and we all had a good laugh. But over the years, I wondered if we don't see God more as a divine self-help coach than one who releases us from our sins.

Sin has never been the most popular topic, and those religious folks who do talk about it often like to focus on other folks' sins. My own, Reformed theological tradition has tended to view sin more as condition than act, something that makes us especially prone to act in ways detrimental to others as well as to ourselves. But we Presbyterians have not been immune to  consumerist, self-help notions of religion that see God and spirituality as one more item to help us become happier, more fulfilled, and so on. In some congregations, it is much easier to get a Jazzercise class started in the Fellowship Hall than it is to have a serious discussion about sin. From our rears release us, but don't worry about the other.

All this started bouncing around in my head after reading an article entitled "Reinhold Niebuhr, Eric Garner, and White Privilege" in Baptist News Global. If you don't know of him, Niebuhr was one of the more famous theologians in 20th century America, and this article recalled his 1932 work, Moral Man and Immoral Society. It spoke of sin's hold on groups and communities as even more tenacious than that on individuals. Niebuhr saw societies as nearly impervious to moral or rational arguments against such problems and as more selfish than individuals.

He was speaking of economics when he wrote that “it has always been the habit of privileged groups to deny the oppressed classes every opportunity for the cultivation of innate capacities and then to accuse them of lacking what they have been denied the right to acquire.” But even though it was decades before the civil rights movement, he saw how the problem of sin was also at work in that arena, and concluded that society would not change on its own. “However large the number of individual white men who do and who will identify themselves completely with the Negro cause, the white race in America will not admit the Negro to equal rights if it is not forced to do so.”

Forced to do so... That speaks to the reality of sin's hold on social forces, a reality that has spent a great deal of time in the headlines of late. The anger from Ferguson and Staten Island, as well as on college campuses around a "rape culture," is anger at an immoral society that is caught up in the grip of sin, that, in the words of the hymn, needs to be "released" from its grip, being incapable of freeing itself.

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As Christians prepare to celebrate the coming of Jesus, it seems an especially fitting time to think about God's Incarnation into a sinful world, an event that evokes quick push-back from immoral society. (Don't forget that Herod's attempt to kill the baby Jesus is a part of the story of the "Wise Men.") But many of us are too busy singing Christmas carols to dwell for long on the problems of immoral society. We may even lash out at those who try to drag us back to Advent, accusing them of ruining the season and undermining the "joyof Christmas."

But the anger over Ferguson and Staten Island, and especially the almost comical blindness of that Staten Island grand jury, remind us that there is a real problem here, one that all the Christmas joy in the world can't quite paper over. And we Christians, those who seek to follow Jesus, can never simply celebrate Jesus' birth. We must also join him in his work, work that terrified the powers that be, the keepers of the status quo, and those who valued peace and order over the needs of the weak, the vulnerable, and the downtrodden.

Sermon video - God's Possibility: Poem Versus Memo

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon - God's Possibility: Poem Versus Memo

As usual in worship, the Scripture readings that preceded the sermon were read from the lectern and pulpit. But on this Sunday Abby Hendricks sang the "Canticle of the Turning," accompanied on guitar by Peyton Jernigan, for the final portion of the reading, Luke 1:46b-55.

Luke 1:5-55

God’s Possibility: Poem Versus Memo

James Sledge                                                               December 7, 2014 – Advent 2

   It’s a most improbable story. An old woman and her equally old husband, childless for years, long since having given up hope of children, will have a son. Despite the word of the angel Gabriel, Zechariah cannot believe such a thing. And so he finds himself mute, divine confirmation of the angel’s promise.

   A teenage girl, not yet married and still a virgin, visited by the same angel and told she will have a child who will be Son of the Most High and restore the throne of David for all time. “Impossible,” thinks Mary, but the angel tells her that the power of God will make it so, and Mary becomes the model disciple, responding to this improbable story with “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

   And the improbable story continues. The young girl goes to visit the old woman, and both become prophets, declaring the new thing that God is about to do and is doing. “(God) has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.

   Imagine that when Abby got up to sing a few moments ago she hadn’t sung verses from a hymnal but instead startling new words about what God is about to do and is doing. What if she sang of God bringing down one percenters and lifting up minimum wage workers, illegal immigrants, and crowds shouting “I can’t breathe”? What if she insisted that God would do this new thing through her? Who among us would believe her?

   Who is going to take the word of a teenage girl all that seriously? Have you ever been at a school board meeting when a middle school girl spoke. People smile and mentally pat her on the head but don’t pay that much attention. She’s just a middle school girl, after all.

   Of course, many of us don’t take improbable biblical stories all that seriously. Elderly women having children, a virgin birth? Ancient stories from ancient, pre-scientific, unsophisticated people who could believe in gods impregnating young women. And we smile and mentally pat the gospel writer on the head. It’s just an ancient story, after all.

   One of the nasty tricks that the modern, scientific age played on us, from the most liberal Christians to the most literal fundamentalists, was convincing us that “truth” is about facts, figures, logic, and what really happened. 
   Heavily seasoned with Greek philosophy, the modern era elevated science and reason and facts and figures above other sorts of knowledge. Quite a few biblical stories couldn’t be “true” by such standards, and in response, Christians tended to go one of two ways. Some resorted to a fundamentalism that assumes science and history are wrong even while accepting the modern, scientific definition of truth. Others accepted the scientific truth of evolution and the Big Bang while claiming that the Bible and faith dealt with a different sort of truth. I clearly fall more into the latter camp, but this view often comes with some pretty arrogant assumptions.

Grasping for Hope

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
     from him comes my salvation.  
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
     my fortress; I shall never be shaken.   Psalm 62:1-2

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, then candidate Obama made a remark about how people in small town, Midwestern communities had endured the loss of jobs, crumbling economies, and other difficulties for many years. He said that considering their struggles it was no surprise "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them..." I was not a terribly smart political thing to say. Nonetheless, there is a certain element of truth to it. In times of great difficulty, all of us look for something to hold onto.

For those worried about inequality and injustice in America, yesterday was another moment that sent many looking for something to hold onto. Just days before, people were talking about how events in Ferguson would speed up a movement to equip all police with body cameras so that we would have clear answers to questions about what actually happened. Contradictory eyewitnesses wouldn't  confuse grand juries. But yesterday a grand jury decided on a case with crystal clear video. It was also a case where a choke hold prohibited by police department guidelines was employed. And yet there was no indictment.

In such a moment, where do people look for hope? Where do they place their trust? What are people to do when they have no good answer? As a pastor, I must confess that to say, "Trust in God," sounds pretty empty right now, more a salve than a help. Karl Marx's opiate of the masses comes to mind.

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I saw this post on Twitter today. "#ThisMustStop if you attend church, STOP SUPPORTING churches that don't support folks in the street. #blacktruthmatters #BlackLivesMatter" Clearly the author was not interested in any religious platitudes. He was looking for real answers, and he suspected that churches, at least some churches, were part of the problem and of little help.

The opening line of today's morning psalm speaks of God alone as fortress and salvation, God alone as solution. But a lot of bad theology and bad religious advice gets distilled from grabbing a verse here and there out of the Bible. The same Bible says, "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." We are called to embody the one who embodied God, and if you are familiar with Jesus' story, you know that he was most often found among the down and out, the poor and vulnerable, and those the respectable religious folks of his day wanted nothing to do with.

Before today, I had not heard of pastor Andre E. Johnson, the author of the tweet quoted above, but I am following him now. He has reminded me that my faith is more than something to cling to in moments of great difficulty. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a call to be Christ to a world that has never fully embraced his ways. 

"Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison or saying I can't breathe or frightened for your children's lives and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' "

Discarding Images of an Angry God

Restore us again, O God of our salvation,
     and put away your indignation toward us. 
Will you be angry with us forever?
     Will you prolong your anger to all generations?  
Will you not revive us again,
     so that your people may rejoice in you?  
Show us your steadfast love, O LORD,
     and grant us your salvation.       Psalm 85:4-7


Some people assume that pastors don't struggle with faith the same as "ordinary people," but of course that's not true. I would never had gone to seminary at age 35, creating great stress and difficulty for my wife and two small children, had I not had some very vivid and moving encounters with God. I've had others since then, but I've also had times, far too many times, when I felt a bit like the psalmist. I've not really thought of it so much as anger as absence. If feels as though God has hidden Godself from me, and I long to be revived by the encounter with God's love and grace once more.

I've often wondered about this problem, and I know I am far from alone in experiencing it. The reasons for it are likely many, but today's devotional by Richard Rohr caused me to reflect on what may be one facet of the problem. Fr. Rohr referenced the writings of a hospice worker who had observed that it was often religious people who seemed most frightened of death. Rohr was not at all surprised, He noted how often religion causes people to be afraid of God, saying, "Why wouldn’t you be? Until we clear away the idea of hell, it is not a benevolent universe, but a hostile and dangerous universe where an angry god does not follow his own commandment about love of enemies."

An angry god who does not follow his own commandment about love of enemies. That thought hit me hard. I've never been one who gave a great deal of thought to hell, long ago having come to agree with Rohr that most of our notions of hell come from Dante and not the Bible. But I wonder if I don't  drag around a lot of my own baggage about God that helps build barriers between me and the divine.

Even most casual Christians are aware of Jesus calling us to love our enemies. Jesus' words, "Father, forgive them," spoken from the cross, are very well known. "God is love," it says in 1 John 4:8, another well known biblical quote. Yet I suspect that my own internal imagery of God often pictures a deity less loving than we who follow Jesus are called to be. Does that mean that I picture a God who is less loving than I imagine myself to be? If so, there are surely implications for my relationship with God.

The evening psalm which I referenced to begin this post does mention benefits for "those who fear him," but I have to think that this "fear" is of an entirely different sort than the one that may lurk in the recesses of my psyche. Biblical awe and reverence are quite other things from my deeply buried worries and fears that God may not be all that well disposed toward me.

Perhaps one reason I've always loved the verses that end Psalm 85 is that they run counter to some of that baggage about God I still tote around. It is a most beautiful, poetic image of restored relationship.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
     righteousness and peace will kiss each other. 
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
      and righteousness will look down from the sky.  
The LORD will give what is good,
     and our land will yield its increase.  
Righteousness will go before him,
     and will make a path for his steps.

"Righteousness and peace will kiss each other." Hallelujah! 

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Sermon: Wishes, Hopes, and Dreams

Luke 1:67-79 (Isaiah 2:1-4)

Wishes, Hopes, and Dreams

James Sledge                                                               November 30, 2014 – Advent 1

When I was a boy, way back in the 1960s, one of the things my brother and I most looked forward to was the arrival of the Sears Christmas catalog. I’m not talking about the regular catalog, a massive thing several inches thick. This was a specialty catalog, though still quite large, geared toward children and Christmas.

Now I realize some of you have never laid eyes on a Sears catalog of any sort, but bear with me for a moment. Way back when, before the internet, the Sears catalog was the place you could find most anything you wanted, the Amazon.com of its day. And the Christmas catalog was filled with toys and games and bikes and most anything a child might want for Christmas. My brother and I would spend hours going through it, marveling at all the wondrous things in it. Some of this was research, looking for potential presents from Santa, or gift suggestions for relatives. But a great deal of it was mere, wishful thinking, a child’s version of “What I would buy if I won the lottery.”

I assume most of you have engaged in such wishful thinking. Who hasn’t occasionally imagined winning the lottery or wished for an impossible haul of Christmas presents.

Speaking of wishing, in Brian McLaren’s We Make the Road by Walking, the chapter for the first week of Advent makes a distinction between wishes, on the one hand, and hopes and dreams, on the other. He writes, “Desires, hopes, and dreams inspire action, and that’s what makes them so different from a wish. Wishing is a substitute for action.”[1] One needn’t agree with McLaren’s exact semantics to get his point. There are different sorts of longing. When someone dreams of running the Marine Corps Marathon she may well start a training routine that will hopefully allow her to finish the race. It is a dream that motivates, very different from, “Oh, I wish I could win the lottery.”

When Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream…” what he was doing had little in common with my looking at spectacular presents I would never get and saying, “Wouldn’t that be grand.” He was speaking of something he dedicated his life to, that he worked diligently to achieve, a real possibility. It was a prophet’s dream.

Prophets, Dr. King, the biblical sort, are connected to God’s dream, the future that God is working to bring. Prophets seek to align people with that dream. When biblical prophets predicted gloom and doom, it was never a precise “This will happen on such and such a date.” It was a call to change, to turn from ways that will lead to destruction. And in the same way, when prophets spoke of a day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, it was never a magic formula or timetable. It was an intimacy with the hopes and dreams of God, an assurance that God would bring history into line with those hopes and dreams. The biblical prophets knew, as the prophet Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Offering Thanks for the Impossible

"How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years." So asks Zechariah. "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" asks Mary. Part of the angel's response to Mary might well have been said to Zechariah, too. "For nothing will be impossible with God."

It is so easy to look at the newscasts and headlines and become cynical. Syria, ISIS, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Ferguson. Partisan bickering and a seemingly broken political system able to do little beside blame the other side. Church pastors are sometimes prone to a cynicism born of congregational life. Pastors can pour heart and soul into declaring God's word, into speaking what they hear God saying, and then see people who say, "Nice message," but seem totally untouched by it. The burnout rate for pastors is quite high, and I've spoken with a few such pastors who tell of frustration and cynicism born of congregations who are experts at modelling the ways of world and culture, but seem little interested in modeling the way of Jesus.

In my own moderate, "progressive" end of the church spectrum, there is sometimes a lot of squeamishness about the Spirit or the power of God working through us. We may resonate with Jesus' call to love others and help the poor and the marginalized, but we imagine that the only power at our disposal is the gathered gifts, talents and resources of our particular group.

In the face of all these forms and sources or cynicism, I am thankful to be confronted once more with the texts of Advent, with voices of prophets who proclaim that God's purposes will come to pass, with the words of Gabriel, "For nothing will be impossible with God."

We modern, sophisticated people sometimes imagine that we have plumbed the limits of what is possible. We "know" which biblical texts are true and which are the fanciful inventions of ancient writers, and we imagine God is bound to our logic and our understandings of how things are.

But from time to time, I catch glimpses of a reality not bound to my logic or beholding to my cynicism. Here and there, I brush up against the power of God that does not acknowledge my notions of what is or isn't possible. And as we enter another Advent, ancient texts speak again of such things. I hear once more that "nothing will be impossible with God," and I recall the fleeting brushes with that power I have known. Small tears appear in the garb of cynicism that I too often wear, and hope peers through. And I am thankful.

Thanks be to God for the hope that is bigger than my cynicism, and a Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Ferguson, Advent, and God's Dream

In the aftermath of last night's rioting in Ferguson, Jeff Krehbiel, a friend and colleague, posted this quote on his Facebook page.

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

These words are from Martin Luther King, Jr. Clearly he was not addressing the events in Ferguson, but the words ring true for today's headlines and for today's America, regardless of those who say that racism and the civil rights movement belong to the past.

In our church staff meeting this morning, we read Isaiah 2:2-4, which includes the famous words, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." In light of events in Ferguson, it felt appropriate to hear a prophet's vision of "days to come," a time when people will "walk in (God's) paths."

Prophets are good at sensing God's dream, and holding it up to us. Dr. King was able to do that. "I have a dream..." he said. He cast a vision of a different day, a new day, a day God dreamed of and so a day that must someday be. And that dream called people to action, to service and sacrifice in a long and difficult journey toward those "days to come."

The events in Ferguson occur just before the first Sunday in Advent. The Presbyterian Book of Common Worship contains a litany for the lighting of Advent Candles that says, "We light this candle as a sign of the coming light of Christ. Advent means coming. We are preparing ourselves for the days..." and the words that follow speak of swords transformed into farming implements, wolves living with lambs, the desert blooming, and Immanuel, God with us. But all too often, all we are not preparing ourselves for any of these things. We are simply getting ready to celebrate another Christmas.

I have nothing against celebrating Christmas, but to do so without attending to the prophetic vision, to God's dream, seems to miss the point somehow. Outside the Church, the coming weeks may be about nothing but decorating and shopping and listening to Christmas music, but that cannot be for us if we are to be the body of Christ.

We celebrate Christ's birth because it is proof that God is engaged in the world, in history. We celebrate Christmas because it is the beginning of our call to be participants in making that dream visible. And so Advent must be a time when we recall the vision of "days to come," when we remember that God is faithful, and God's promises will bear fruit. Advent and Christmas should be a time when all Christians recommit ourselves to the prophetic visions of Isaiah and Micah and Martin Luther King, to God's dream of a day that is surely coming.

Regardless of the exact sequence of events in Ferguson, regardless of where "fault" lies in the shooting, the grand jury decision, or the unrest that followed, we who follow Jesus are called to show the world a different possibility. We are called to embody and work for that prophetic vision, that divine dream that so easily dissipates in the face of cynicism and hopelessness.

If we are to prepare during Advent and celebrate at Christmas, surely it must be because we have good news for the citizens of Ferguson, especially for those who have lost all hope. We must be able to declare, "God is with us. God will strengthen us as we give ourselves in service to the prophetic vision and divine dream." We may not be able to bring the Kingdom in all its fullness, but we can make it visible and tangible and so help create hope. Otherwise our Christmas is little more than an exercise in nostalgia and manufactured cheerfulness.

Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday (Ezekiel 34:11-24)

Some of you likely recall the old Beatles song from The White Album entitled, “Piggies.” The four, short verses were set to a fun, bouncy little tune, but the words contain biting, social commentary. Here are the first three verses.

Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in

In their styes with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking

Little piggies and bigger piggies. The prophet Ezekiel makes a very similar move, but being Jewish, he can't use pigs. Instead he speaks of lean sheep and fat sheep, offering the same sort of social commentary George Harrison did with his song. Ezekiel joins a long line of God’s prophets who speak of judgment against the wealthy who enjoy the good life at the expense of the weak and the poor.

I don’t know that the world has changed all that much from Ezekiel’s day. America has had  rather remarkable run where a large, middle class enjoyed the fruits of the economy, but many fear that this is breaking down, that our economic system is becoming more and more skewed toward the wealthy, the one percent, the bigger piggies, the fat sheep.

But Ezekiel insists that God will intervene on behalf of the lean sheep, the scattered and hungry sheep. God will seek out the lost and bring back those who have strayed and been battered and injured. And this claim is all the more remarkable given the people to whom Ezekiel speaks it, exiles in Babylon.

The notion that God will protect the sheep and bring them home is an audacious claim to make in the face of the awesome power of the Babylonian Empire. They are a great superpower that has easily smashed cities of Judah and destroyed the capital of Jerusalem. The palace and the great Temple built by Solomon lie in ruins, all the finery from both now contained in the Babylonian treasury. What possible hope can the displaced remnant of Israel have in the face of such power?

But Ezekiel insists that despite all evidence to the contrary, God is sovereign. Not King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon nor the gods of Babylon, but Yahweh. And Yahweh will rescue the sheep who now find themselves at the mercy of powers and principalities that seem to hold all the cards. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

You may have seen the recent news reports documenting how the economic doldrums we've experienced since 2008 have impacted charitable giving. Strangely, giving by the wealthiest Americans, the people who have benefited the most from the stock market rebound, has decreased. At the same time, those toward the bottom of the economic ladder, who have seen little of the "recovery" we've been in for the last five years, have increased their giving. Fat sheep and lean sheep; bigger piggies and little piggies.

I heard a pastor this week speak on church stewardship, quoting the statistics above. He said something about those with wealth having to give an account of what they have done with their riches. Not language much used in our day, but it is the same sort of language Ezekiel uses. "Thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep." And Ezekiel is pretty clear that God is on the side of lean sheep, of little piggies.

But why should anyone believe such a thing? Clearly, many do not. We have confined God to a narrower and narrower slice of our lives. Even many who are believers reduce that to "believing in Jesus" and therefore receiving a heavenly prize. Many more dismiss with God's power altogether. They may even "belong" to a church but their money is theirs, to do with however they see fit. No account to God for them.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. Many churches will mark this in their worship, but it won't really seem much different from any other Sunday. All that will change in the coming weeks as we draw close to Christmas. (We'll call it Advent, but often that simply means "pre-Christmas.") Attendance will swell and sanctuaries will get all decorated. We'll enjoy all the glad tidings and good cheer, but it won't really change anything. The great thing about a baby Jesus is he doesn't speak, nothing like that pesky adult Jesus who sounds a lot like Ezekiel at times.

Christ the King, our ruler, master and Lord, or so we say. Christ the King falls on the last Sunday of the Christian calendar, the culmination of the year that begin in Advent. Our king is the one who lived and preached and died and was raised. And this risen Jesus commanded his followers, us, to make disciples, "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." I'm assuming "everything" includes all that stuff about caring for the poor, about wealth making it hard to enter the kingdom, and so on. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

I guess that is the crux of the matter. Do we dare believe such a thing? Not do we believe in God or Jesus? Not do we go to church and therefore hope God is well disposed toward us? But do we believe that Christ is Lord of all, seated above all the great powers of our day, above all the armies and technology and wealth? Do we believe that we are called to follow him and obey him, and that whether or not we do ultimately matters? Do we?